


Not In Nevada

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-28
Updated: 2007-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:16:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John gets sick but doesn't let on – until it's too late and Rodney has to take matters into his own hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not In Nevada

John manages to slink back to his quarters close to 2100 hours, feeling like death but grimly not showing it, nodding and offering a distracted half-smile to anyone he passes in the halls. It's only once the door to his room is safely shut behind him that he moans pitifully, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, trying to order his fingers to do his bidding over and above the terrible throbbing in his head. He shuffles across to his bed, sits down, and stares at his boots for a long, baffled moment, then flops back against his pillows and throws an arm over his eyes. Being sick sucks hairy Wraith ass. That's his considered opinion.

He's no idea how long he lies there, but he's roused from his stupor by the sound of his door opening. Sitting up, he bites back a wince as his brain sloshes painfully into the side of his skull, and smiles blandly at Rodney, who's standing just inside the now closed door with his arms folded and a mulish look on his face.

"McKay," John drawls. "Social visit?"

Rodney huffs, packing a year's worth of disdain into the tiny sound. "You're pathetic," he says snippily.

John tries to raise an eyebrow, but his skin his hot and tight, and all he manages is a grimace. "Fnarrgh," he offers, and flops back against his pillows.

Rodney sighs – a kinder sound this time – and comes across the room to press a hand to John's forehead. John mumbles faintly – Rodney's hand is soft and cool and the pressure feels reassuring, but it's gone again in the next instant. "Pathetic," Rodney repeats, but now he just sounds exasperated and fond, and John doesn't mind that so much. He lies immobile, trying to think of something to say, when he feels Rodney's fingers working at the laces on his boots, tugging and twisting until the boots are gone.

He lifts his head to look at his feet just as Rodney pulls his socks off. "Huh," he says quietly.

"You thought no one would notice, didn't you?" Rodney chides, straightening up and reaching to unfasten the rest of John's shirt buttons. "That you could just barrel around the city, flushed as a schoolgirl on a first date, and we'd chalk it up to what exactly, cheekbone-specific sunburn? Come on, sit up." He pulls gently at John's shoulder and John obliges, sitting up so that Rodney can ease his shirt off his shoulders, tug his t-shirt out of his pants and pull it gently over his head.

"You're very bossy," John observes, because he feels like he should say _something_.

"And you're the first person to articulate that thought," Rodney says dryly, helping John to his feet and messing with his fly. "Pants now."

John's helpless in the face of Rodney's determination and finds himself tucked between his sheets, clad only in his boxers, without really processing how it all occurs. He frowns, the blankets bunched in one hand right beneath his chin, feeling somewhat as though he's protecting his virtue – a particularly dumb thought considering Rodney's obliterated what virtue he brought to Pegasus with practically every part of his anatomy. "Rodneeeeey."

"Quiet now." Rodney wanders back from the bathroom with a washcloth in his hand, folding it in half. He lays it on John's forehead and it feels _so good_ that John's toes curl in traitorous delight. "Idiot," Rodney murmurs. He pries John's fingers from the blankets and tucks them against his chest, patting the covers back into shape around John's shoulders. "I'm going to see Carson and get you painkillers. Move and I will dismember you with the help of specially constructed laser-shooting robots."

"Robots 'n' lasers would be _cool_ ," John mumbles, but Rodney's already gone.

Things get fuzzy after that. Rodney comes back – John remembers as much because he's forced to sit up and swallow pills and they hurt his throat – but John couldn't say when; time seems to be expanding and contracting in unpredictable ways. Sometimes everything's warm and he kicks off his covers – when he does, Rodney just tugs them right back up again, the busybody – and sometimes he's absolutely freezing, but Rodney still insists he wear the washcloth of cold on his forehead. There's a period of time where things get very colorful behind his eyelids and he thinks he might be seven or eight and in the house in Nevada which means he ought to get up and ride his bike, but then Carson's there, so it can't be Nevada, and he can hear Rodney, so it must be okay, whatever it is, _when_ ever it is. He gets a cough, and that's annoying, because every time he coughs his head tries to explode, and he'd rather it didn't. His hands get clammy and numb, and they move around a lot without him particularly asking them to, but Rodney grabs hold at one point and that helps. He thinks maybe he even sleeps.

When he wakes up – properly wakes up, blinks his eyelids and doesn't feel like the action's going to cause his forehead to split clean open – he's sweating and uncomfortable and Rodney's sitting on the couch typing on a laptop. "Mmmmph," John says intelligently.

Rodney looks at him. "Hey," he says softly.

John blinks a few more times, testing the waters. "Gross," he mumbles.

"Shower?"

John pulls in a breath. "Mmmmmm."

Rodney puts down his laptop and gets up, wanders over. "Good thing I've seen you naked before," he smiles, and he pushes John's hair back from his forehead before he tugs down the covers.

It's a sweet gesture, and John looks up at Rodney, grateful. "Sorry?" he says.

Rodney rolls his eyes, but he looks more amused than annoyed. "Yes, yes, I'll berate you later. Come on," and he has an arm behind John's shoulders, helping him up, taking most of his weight as they head toward the bathroom.

"What happened?" John asks, looking down at his legs – they don't seem very interested in holding him up or moving like they ought.

"Fever," Rodney offers, propping John up against the wall and reaching inside the shower stall to turn on the water. "It's been two days."

John frowns. "Huh?"

"Two days. Off," Rodney orders, fingers hooked inside John's boxers, and John obligingly shifts just enough for Rodney to pull them down his legs.

"Two days?"

"Did the fever give you a hearing impediment? Or are you just marveling at the passage of time?" Rodney prods and pulls and pushes until John's standing under the shower spray.

It feels _fantastic_. "Ohmygod," John sighs, leaning his forehead against the tile and letting the water pound over his shoulders.

"Don't drown," Rodney says cheerfully. "I'm changing your sheets."

"Mmm," John mumbles, and stands there some more, stands there until he's pruney and pink, steam billowing around him in comforting swirls.

"Soap! Armpits!" Rodney calls from the bedroom.

"Bus'bod'," John whispers, but he fumbles with the soap and does as he's told, even squints at the bottles in the corner of the stall, works out which is shampoo, and saves his hair from tragic greasy flatness. He yawns as he rinses the suds away.

"Done?" Rodney asks. He's standing outside the shower stall with a towel.

John thinks about it. "S'warm in here."

"Well your bed is warm too, and possesses the advantage of allowing you to be prone. I have very little faith in your ability to stand up for much longer without some sort of falling, slipping, head-cracking tragedy as the result."

That sounds like a bad thing, so John shuts off the water and fumbles the door open, steps out into the towel Rodney's holding. He feels a little ridiculous as Rodney towels his head. "Hey."

"Shut up," Rodney chides and pushes him to sit down on the closed toilet seat. "Teeth."

John sulks, but his mouth feels like it's coated in wallpaper paste, so he does as he's told because he _wants_ to, not because Rodney knows best. He rinses and spits and looks sullenly up at Rodney. "Anything else?"

"Just sleep," Rodney says gently, and he looks so concerned that John flushes all over.

"Sorry," he says again as Rodney helps him up and back to bed, tumbling him between crisp, cool sheets. "Don't mean to – "

"Oh for heaven's sake," Rodney says, tucking the blankets up around John's chin. "You 'not meaning to' is what got us into this mess in the first place. If you'd just said something before you were a seething Petri dish of bacterial amusement park rides you wouldn't have gotten this sick, you great, gelatinous moron."

John feels himself smiling goofily. "Moron?" Rodney only calls people he really likes morons.

"Yes," Rodney says, and bends to kiss John's forehead. "Don't do that again, okay?" He cards his fingers through John's damp hair. "You scared me."

John turns his head and knocks an off-kilter kiss to the inside of Rodney's arm. "Okay." His eyes are drifting closed despite himself. "I'm glad I wasn't in Nevada when I was thinking it."

"Uh." There's a pause. "Me too?"

John nods, drifting. "Yeah, you too. Me too."

Rodney laughs softly. "Sleep." And his hand drifts over John's hair.

"Okay," John sighs, and he thinks perhaps the hand stays there while he falls asleep, although he's much too tired to be sure.


End file.
